Category Archives: Town Pavilion

The ensemble has been actively updating repertoire in our “book” of tunes available for various performances and also creating new music for a collaboration with the duo Nagual for the Black Lab Performance Series held at Paragraph Gallery.

We began this process in the summer by re-introducing a composition by our teacher, I Ketút Gedé Asnawa, that was composed for the group early in his residency entitled Gita GentaKasturi.

This work was incorporated in an hour-long performance curated by ensemble member Shawn Hansen in collaboration with visiting artists Nagual, primarily a guitar duo, that occurred on Oct 5 at the Paragraph Gallery. This performance also incorporated “conduction” like textures created and directed by ensemble members Sam Hughes and Wayne Yockey. The inclusion of these improvised textures heralded a new direction in available sonic approaches for the group, since most tradtional gamelan repertoire is highly composed.

Our work since completing this performance has involved primarily re-introducing a standard dance work from Balinese repertoire entitled Oleg Tamulilingancomposed by I Wayan Beratha.

We plan to present part of this piece along with a demo for the December 13th Open House event at 5pm in the Black Box on the 6th Floor of Town Pavilion.

Our next concert event will be a small group performance as part of Jazz Winterlude at Johnson County Community College on January 25 at 4pm.

Gamelan Genta Kasturi, Kansas City’s community Balinese gamelan orchestra, celebrates it’s 10th Anniversary with a special concert in the Truman Forum of the Plaza Branch of the Kansas City Public Library (4801 Main Street Kansas City, MO 64112) at 4pm on Saturday May 18.

This performance will be an overview of material from the group’s ten year history and will include traditional Balinese repertoire and original compositions by ensemble founder I Ketút Gedé Asnawa and current ensemble director Patrick Alonzo Conway.

We were honored to have a crew from TVOne – Jakarta, Indonesia come to our rehearsal on March 16 and film us performing Angels & Demons at Play, Catur Rawita and Kebyar Ding. They then interviewed ensemble director Patrick Alonzo Conway and ensemble member Berend Niehorster-Cook.

Reporter Dindi Tartika and cameraman Agung were accompanied by Lauren Jackman representing the State Department. The crew is in the US working on a feature piece on corruption and have visited Washington DC, Kansas City and were preparing to move on to Chicago. An additional feature on the influence of Indonesian culture in the US is also on their to-do list, thus their work with Gamelan Genta Kasturi. Also in attendance was Marti Wilson with the Indonesian Association of Greater Kansas City and her son Bayu.

We all had a great time and really appreciated them visiting us and documenting what we are doing thanks to Charlotte Street Foundation and the Urban Culture Project Studio Residency Program.

Gamelan Genta Kasturi had a good turn out for our Open Studios Performance on Sat Mar 9 in the Black Box Theater at Town Pavilion. About fifty people came out and received an overvue of Balinese gamelan music including a new creation Beleganjur composed by ensemble director Patrick Alonzo Conway, Catur Rawita composed for the group by ensemble founder I Ketút Gedé Asnawa, Blossoming Dance also by Conway, Kebyar Ding (1928) by I Wayan Regog, and Angels & Demons at Play a re-composition by Conway of a Sun Ra piece.

This Friday, UCP studio resident Eric Dobbins invites you behind the curtain… welp, a couple of old quilts actually! While he puts the finishing touches on his “Diamond Man Orange & the Fancy Dance” mural, you’ll be invited to play some ping pong, listen to records, have a cold one and explore some of the process behind his work.

Four-color CMYK screen prints of the image above will be available for the interested, while statement, process work and further mock ups of the images below will be exhibited.

image: Pilpy Boy Pencil Caddy

image: Diamond Man Orange with Pilpy Boy’s Hat Toy

image: Diamond Man Orange Hat Expansion Set

A selection of work from his previous projects, including the Rocket Grant funded publishing effort Field Trip, will be on display as well.

“I think you need to be vigilant. I’m a kind of hard-wired pessimist. I can’t help but see the world in a certain kind of way. For my own sanity, I find it necessary to seek out beauty in the world, and I do that through music, and through literature and nature, and in the same ways that everybody else does, I suppose. That seems to be important to me.” Nick Cave